Vint Cerf is a dapper man, pulling off a three-piece suit like no one else in the tech world. So of course he has a wine cellar—and it's better than yours, assuming you even have one. (I don't.)

It stands to reason that the wine cellar owned by the co-creator of the Internet will have some futuristic touches, right? Indeed it does. Talking at CES today, Cerf described his home's sensor network, which uses IPv6 radios and the Arch Rock PhyNet smart grid system to track information like light levels, temperature, and humidity. This is important for a wine cellar, which has to remain at proper temperature and humidity levels to preserve the wine's taste and keep the corks from drying out. Naturally, Cerf gets text messages when something goes awry.

"I was visiting Argonne National Laboratory for three days, and my wife was away on some trip," Cerf said. "So for three days every five minutes I was getting messages saying, 'your wine is warming up.' By the time I got home it was 70 degrees in the cellar, which is not good. So I called the Arch Rock guys and I said, 'do you have a remote actuator I can run through the system?' and they said 'yes'. I said, 'does it have strong access controls?' because there's a 15-year-old next door and I don't want him messing with my wine cellar. And they said 'yes.' So we installed that."

That allows Cerf to remotely turn the cooling system back on. But it made him wonder what else could be done.

"I got to thinking that I can tell if someone has gone in the wine cellar if I'm not there because I can see if the lights went on, but I don't know what they did in there. So I thought, well why don't I put an RFID chip on every bottle, and then I can keep an inventory of the wine to see if any wine has left the wine cellar without my permission. So I posted about the design of this thing, and [an engineer said] 'there is a bug in your design.' And I said, 'what do you mean there is a bug?' And he says, 'well, you can go into the wine cellar, drink the wine and leave the bottle.' So now we have to put sensors in the corks."

As far as we know, Cerf hasn't actually done that just yet—but putting sensors on the corks would have even more advantages beyond theft prevention. He told this same story back in 2009 (YouTube video), when he said, "If I'm going to that much trouble, I should put some analysis in there so I can look at the esters that are developing in the wine to determine whether the wine is ready to drink, and before you open the wine bottle you interrogate the cork. And if it turns out that's the bottle that got to 90 degrees because the cooling system went off, that's the bottle you give to somebody who doesn't know the difference."

Cerf's larger point is that pretty much everything is getting connected to the Internet now, and it will change the way you manage your life. Cerf used to joke that some day light bulbs would have their own IP addresses—now they actually do, and he can't tell the joke anymore, he said. People are starting to talk about smart refrigerators, and Cerf described a future where your 'fridge monitors what's inside it and tells you what kinds of recipes you can make. You could also conceivably have a scale that's connected to the same network, and if you're getting a bit tubby your refrigerator might tell you to eat a salad instead of a burger.

The devices in your home today may not be continuously gathering information, but these products are hitting the market (like smart thermostats) and it's only the beginning. "What is important is to know that this is going to become increasingly common," Cerf said.

I'm really looking forward to the day when stuff from the grocery store comes with RFID tags already on board. Going through the trouble of tagging everything manually would take all the fun out of the refrigerator system he describes.

I'm really looking forward to the day when stuff from the grocery store comes with RFID tags already on board. Going through the trouble of tagging everything manually would take all the fun out of the refrigerator system he describes.

I'm also a beer brewer and use an arduino to monitor my fermentation chamber.

I installed this in my father's wine cellar about a year ago. I connected this (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B003E46EU4), and wrote a small app for his smart phone, so he can get push notifications, and check the stats any time.

He's a bit of a luddite, so he thinks this is all basically witchcraft.

Jean-Claude over at JeeLabs has been doing home monitoring/automation for a few years now. His basic JeeNode is an Arduino-compatible board (the pins are rearranged for easier modularity, though, so certain Arduino-based projects need some modifications) with a built-in RFM12 module, for the price of an entry-level Arduino; he's gone on to build a pretty extensive ecosystem around the platform.

Wireless security is more or less non-existent at this level, so I'd be worried about VC's 15-year-old neighbor... but it's cool stuff and a lot of fun.

Speaking of small, internet-connected sensor/actuator boards, I recently found out about a local company making a product known as the Electric Imp, which is essentially a board like the Arduino except the size of an SD card and internet-connected by default, for doing Internet-of-Things stuff. It seems a bit like a pre-packaged solution much like what Cerf here appears to have rolled himself.

In any case, it is nice to see this whole "Internet of Things" concept take off. IPv6 is no doubt helping in this, as pointed out in the article.

"So I thought, well why don't I put an RFID chip on every bottle, and then I can keep an inventory of the wine to see if any wine has left the wine cellar without my permission. So I posted about the design of this thing, and [an engineer said] 'there is a bug in your design.' And I said, 'what do you mean there is a bug?' And he says, 'well, you can go into the wine cellar, drink the wine and leave the bottle.' So now we have to put sensors in the corks."

"So I thought, well why don't I put an RFID chip on every bottle, and then I can keep an inventory of the wine to see if any wine has left the wine cellar without my permission. So I posted about the design of this thing, and [an engineer said] 'there is a bug in your design.' And I said, 'what do you mean there is a bug?' And he says, 'well, you can go into the wine cellar, drink the wine and leave the bottle.' So now we have to put sensors in the corks."

I've had this type of setup for years, mostly using X10 for the control and Oregon Scientific for the cheap sensors. What amazes me is that he doesn't simply have a script control the system and send him email/txt if things appear to not be working. Get with it, Cerf!

To build on the expensive uselessness that both tech and wine savantry make possible, he could light the cellar with those new Philips Internet LED light bulbs and then remotely tune the color of the light to what gave the wine better defense against changing conditions: temperature goes up? Shift to green; humidity down? Purple, definitely.

Clearly we are only at the infancy of the Digital Age and we still have a looonnnng way to go. I for one don't mind all the technology incorporation. I've wanted a full digital kitchen for awhile now, Like in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, but with less rube goldberg.

I'm out though when we hit the Soylent Green era. You can reconstruct vege fibers all you want in burgers and such, but it doesn't mean I'll eat it. That movie *shudders*